A Busy Week but Despite Everything We Are Still Selling Seed

A lot of things have happened this week, I will try to cover them all

The word limited has been removed from the Farmers Own registration here in Kenya so that it is registered as a company limited by guarantee (ie a charity) and not as at present registered as a company limited by shares. We can now work with the Ministry and with the donors who have to know that FO is a charity according to its registered status here in Kenya.

ICCO is the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation their mission is to work towards a world where poverty and injustice are no longer present. ( http://www.icco.nl). We are pleased to hear that ICCO will give some funding next year to assist our project, ICCO particularly like the fact that we have large numbers of farmers in our scheme.

The political situation here in Kenya is a bit difficult at the moment. There has been fighting in Kisumu and Kakamega and some deaths as a result of the opposing factions in the upcoming referendum on the new Kenyan constitution. The factions are either orange (against) or banana (for) and division on tribal and ethnic lines has occured. The worst fighting is in Western Province which is orange. We will not have FO staff in the area now until after the referendum (except Roman who is looking after the Kakamega office)). The referendum is on 21 Nov.
Despite this we are still selling sunflower seed to the three farmers groups that we are working with in Western Province. seed is still selling as rains are a bit late and erratic, seeds planted so far will be ready for harvest in January
Update on sunflower seed sales, seed sales so far (kg)
Abdi's group 95
Willis Wachilonga's group 100
Paul Mlulu's group 185

Mildred (our marketing officer who is in UK just now) will be going to meet ICCO in Netherlands along with Jim our CEO and Stephen our Company Secretary at a meeting on 12 December

We have an invitation to a workshop in Ethiopia at the end of January

We have an important meeting with Rockefeller next week to answer their questions, the questions are

* Outline of Farmers Own
* Organisation of FAAs
* Size of Markets
* Financial Planning for the FAAs
* Monitoring and Evaluation Plans
* ICCO Funding
* TSBF Discussions

We now have a report and power point presentation to address these points and I am meeting Dr Oluoch, Chairman of the Poverty Eradication Commission to discuss these as he has to present them to Dr Adesina of Rockefeller on Tuesday. I cannot present as I have to go back to the UK because my mother is seriously ill in hospital.

I will keep the blog going from UK for the next period

Meeting with TSBF on 8 November

Meeting with Tropical Soil BiologyFertility Institute on 8 Nov

Persons Involved
Dr Jonas Chianu, 7224755, j.chianu@cgiar.org (TSBF)
Dr Bernard Vanlauwe, 7224755, b.vanlauwe@cgiar.org (TSBF)
Dr Tony Margetts (FO)

They can offer the following
* germ seed of a variety that they would like farmers to use (so called promiscuous variety)
* agronomy, studies of varieties, planting spacing, mixing with other crops and crop rotation
* processing at 3 levels, community level processing leading to local business, includes processing to make milk
* soil science such as particular soils and phosphate studies

We have the following that they need to meet their obligations
* organised farmers groups (FAAs & SHGs)
* ability to provide education and training to these groups
* provision of services to the farmers groups to facilitate setting up local businesses
* trading agreements based on both contracts and trust which have been shown to work
* arrangements to distribute seeds and collect product which have been shown to work
* provision of transport in our areas
* negotiating with the buyers eg BIDCO

Actions for Farmers Own
* Laban to meet Bernard in Western and to arrange to meet the farmers together to help to identify in more detail ways of working together on common soya based projects
* Laban to discuss common agricultural matters with TSBF to identify in more detail ways of working together
* FO to estimate if possible how much soya seed our farmers groups have available for planting next season (TSBF are trying to estimate this for all Kenya as there is a big shortfall in 2006)

Other things to consider
It seems that soya is high on the agenda of the Min of Ag and MOPND just now
Education and training is one of our strengths, maybe we should have this more prominently in our future plans
Soya needs phosphate, how do we do this
We should look at the NGO Malnutrition Matters, they are a partner of TSBF
We need to set up a monitoring programme to monitor benefits at a micro level, eg at the family level
We need a costing for soya production including likely floor price and bonus

Active Again

Back in Nairobi to try to raise some more money for Farmers Own so the bog will be more active over the next 3 weeks

Jocali on Saturday
Jocali is a Swahili word meaning hot sun but it is used in Kenya to describe the roadside fundis who maintain cars on patches of waste ground near petrol garages. These Fundis have usually worked with the big maintenance garages then set up on their own as a business. Usually there is one experienced and older guy and then several younger apprentices. Some of these Jocali are very good and Sam and I visited such a one on Saturday to sort out the Farmers Own pickup which was suffering badly from lack of TLC, especially for the steering. The Farmers Own staff have experienced two bad crashes recently and we definitely need to avoid another one. Also Sam and Laban had been stopped by the police for polluting Nairobi with black smoke from the exhaust. Not sure why they picked on us when just about every matatu and lorry in the whole country has the same problem.
The Fundis drained and flushed the engine, fitted new oil and air filters, new brakes, serviced the steering pump, filled the steering system with hydraulic fluid and welded on a new bonnet catch which had been missing since July. We had been having bad visions of the bonnet flying open and smashing the windscreen.
Now it is much better, I feel more confident driving round Nairobi.

Sunday
I went to East Leigh today to buy some trousers. Here there is an amazing concentration of shops big and small all selling cloth or clothing. There is a maze of unmade streets and now we have the rains most of them are either flooded or a sea of mud, the water smells dreadfully of sewage. The main street is tarmac but is narrow and constantly jammed with buses and matatus, the water in the side streets is constantly being sloshed all over the main street by traffic so the whole place is wet and smelly right now. East Leigh is also a transport hub where long distance buses lorries and matatus set off for the North. The place is so thronging with people and the hand carts which are used to move goods around the locality that traffic is constantly at a crawl. The people and the hand carts have to find a way through the buses and the mud so shopping in East Leigh it is a real obstacle course and quite an adventure. Best to buy 2 pair of trousers one of which should be brown